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Rishirishi wrote:Our company outsourced SAP and is now on the recieving end. They have just realizeed the real costs

But discussion has already started to move out of SAP. what if any options are there?? Everyone seems to be thinking of could.

There are options. I had a look at an interesting product last week. It is quite SDRE but looks good for some situations (the presenter mentioned some operator count like <20 and manufacturing industries which have used the product. It has tight integration with some quality frameworks and helps there. Has a team working on it for about 15 years and doing well enough to remain in business. Can also customized to needs).In any case, my personal opinion about ERP is that there is nothing called off-the-shelf solution in this field. One has to customize (heavily to be of real use) to make it fit the needs of the organization. Else it is a failure as the organization is expected to fit into the expectations of the software leading to a classical change management nightmare.So, move carefully step by step and not expect every problem to be solved just because something has been installed and is accessible.

SAP comes from oldish IBM type school of enterprise software once they get into a big corporate it is difficult to get rid of them because initial investment is huge and their package is not very open to talk to other applications in the enterprise system , so you have to rely on other SAP products to talk to SAP's ERP suite.

Anyways days of monopoly are over , now enterprises are gradually moving to subscription based software mostly hosted on cloud big fish like Oracle, SAP and IBM are already trying to adapt to the new market , slow adapters will perish in the churn.

ERP vendors discourage customization in two ways1. Cost2. ScheduleThe reason in my view is that a customized solution does not work as well as a plain vanilla one (the legacy mentioned by negi, not-designed-to-change-much etc being among the top). They do promote "best-practices" for verticals which work very well with less (limits are narrow and defined by them) or no change. That is where the organization is forced to suit the needs of the software.

MUMBAI: IT industry body Nasscom has forecast that the industry growth in the coming financial year would be about the same as in the current one. The association said on Tuesday that the growth would be 13% in 2014-15, and estimated that it would be between 12% and 14% in the coming year.

Nasscom said software exports in 2015-16 would grow to $110-$112 billion from about $98.5 billion in the 2015 fiscal ending March.The overall Indian IT-BPM revenues is expected to be in the range of $165-169 billion next year, compared to $146 billion this year.

The domestic IT-BPM sector (including hardware, e-commerce and software products) is expected to outpace the country's IT exports. It's expected to grow by 15%-17% to $55-$57 billion, compared to $48 billion in the current fiscal. The growth is expected to come from e-ecommerce and the government's push to boost technology adoption.

The industry, which employs 3.5 million people, made a net addition of 2.3 lakh people in this fiscal. The sector's contribution to the country's GDP has risen to 9.5% from 8% last year. It contributes 38% to the country's total services exports.

India's second largest outsourcer had hiked salaries by 6-7 per cent last year too, but expectations were running high this year as new CEO Vishal Sikka gave back-to-back 100 per cent variable payouts and out-of-turn promotions in a bid to contain a record high attrition.

India's second largest outsourcer had hiked salaries by 6-7 per cent last year too, but expectations were running high this year as new CEO Vishal Sikka gave back-to-back 100 per cent variable payouts and out-of-turn promotions in a bid to contain a record high attrition.

Truth is out... This is what I said before. PRESSTitutes earlier said that INFY employees got 100% bonus!

Big publicly traded tech companies like Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn regularly pay new hires out of Stanford a salary of between $100,000 and $150,000. In addition, those companies will offer stock grants worth $100,000 or more. Sometimes there are signing bonuses close to $25,000 (and less-established tech companies often offer top Stanford recruits much more than that).

The numbers can hit $500,000 or more. This time a year ago, Snapchat was offering Stanford graduates $100,000 to $150,000 in salary and $400,000 in stock grants vested in four years. Snapchat's offers are lighter this year; finishing students are being offered no more than $300,000 in stock.

India's second largest outsourcer had hiked salaries by 6-7 per cent last year too, but expectations were running high this year as new CEO Vishal Sikka gave back-to-back 100 per cent variable payouts and out-of-turn promotions in a bid to contain a record high attrition.

Truth is out... This is what I said before. PRESSTitutes earlier said that INFY employees got 100% bonus!

My sasurji was gloating about this some months ago when the news came out. Probably a way to get us to R2I, but I am sick of hearing about how great the Indian IT industry is. My PeechaKaro experience scarred me for life.

In most of these companies they also make you sign a bond i.e. if you leave within 1 year of getting the bonus you need to pay it back including the tax deduction. Moreover I heard that bonus payout amount was directly proportional to the number of years of service iow fat lards were made fatter and foot soldiers were thrown a couple of bones.

This guy has suddenly become famous. Of all things he made his money selling rival software to MS Office. His office suite has a product for product counterpart to MS Office suite and looks like it sells well in SE Asia. He operates out of Malaysia.

Pudur, a 37-year-old native of Chennai, founded Celframe in 1998 after graduating from university, and the software firm now produces the world's second most popular word processor after Microsoft.

This guy has suddenly become famous. Of all things he made his money selling rival software to MS Office. His office suite has a product for product counterpart to MS Office suite and looks like it sells well in SE Asia. He operates out of Malaysia.

Pudur, a 37-year-old native of Chennai, founded Celframe in 1998 after graduating from university, and the software firm now produces the world's second most popular word processor after Microsoft.

^^^I tried to access their site and it kept saying "Band Width Limit Exceeded" or something similar. So he is a con? He has other businesses like mining according to the internet. But now I am suspecting them too.

negi wrote:In most of these companies they also make you sign a bond i.e. if you leave within 1 year of getting the bonus you need to pay it back including the tax deduction. Moreover I heard that bonus payout amount was directly proportional to the number of years of service iow fat lards were made fatter and foot soldiers were thrown a couple of bones.

are these bonds legally enforceable? what are they gonna do? hold back on paperwork?

Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc today announced the operationalisation of a new Cray XC40 supercomputer at the Supercomputing Education and Research Center (SERC) of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore. With more than 1.4 petaflops of computing performance, the Cray supercomputer nick-named `SahasraT' at SERC is the first petaflop system in India, according to Cray.

Located at the IISc, a premier research institution for advanced scientific and technological research and education in India, SERC is the country's leading computing center with state-of-the art facilities that cater to the ever-increasing demands of high performance computing (HPC) for scientific and engineering research in India. The center leads several national initiatives on HPC, and is actively involved in research projects and consultancy in collaboration with government agencies and private companies.

The Cray XC40 supercomputer at SERC will serve as the primary system for cutting-edge research in science and engineering at the IISc, according to a Cray release.

"We are proud that SERC is now home to India's first petaflop supercomputing system, which will power the center's important computational science initiatives," said Nick Gorga, Cray's vice president of sales, Asia Pacific.

"The IISc is India's premier institution for advanced scientific and technological research and education, and we are honored that a Cray XC40 supercomputer is the center's primary computing resource for the IISc user community. Our customer base in India continues to grow, and we look forward to our new partnership with the IISc and its researchers and engineers," he added.

Gus wrote:are these bonds legally enforceable? what are they gonna do? hold back on paperwork?

The bonds are not legally enforceable, because "bonded labour" is banned in India. But what many companies do is to get it on record (with signature of the employee) that the company has spent money on training the employee. So if the employee does not stick on for a stipulated time, the company can recover the "training costs". A very popular IT "major" even had tried this trick to make people returning from USA, stick on for a year more in the company .

More than any legal enforcement it is the kind of "networking & cooperation" between various IT companies which may be harmful to the employees. The data of the so called "defaulters" can be shared, and no big IT company would hire the "defaulters". But this may also be a story of the past as there are lot more of IT companies in India, and this kind of blacklisting mechanisms may not work for ever.

vayu tuvan wrote:For example, experience certificate and pervious employment certificate, without which the new employer would not give an employment letter . That is India.

There have been also cases where the potential joinee clearly stated that he is quitting current company in not so good terms, and so may not get any sort of certificates. The other company just asked for the joining letter given by the first company, recent pay slips and the bank account statements of the potential joinee. If all those were above board, hiring was given a green signal.

X-posting to use as example for Agile development methodology in hi-tech fields...

vina wrote:

shiv wrote:The IAF cannot simply be a elite Fi drivers club. They need to develop a separate culture that digs into engineering and technology.

Oh. I would LOVE it if the IAF jocks are like elite F1 drivers. The F1 drivers are nothing like the dumb cretins who drive at ridiculous speeds and ultra dangerously like wannabe Schumachers who infest the streets of Bangalore.

Rather F1 driving is an ultra technical scientific enterprise, with nothing left to chance and everything carefully choreographed. If you think thought it was the driving skills that mostly won F1s, WRONG. It is the vehicle engineering and the team tactics and strategy mostly.

During development, the F1 teams have dedicated test drivers who continously give feedback to the designers and developers on what worked, what didnt work for every small change or hypothesis/design that was implemented. How did the car feel like, how was the suspension, how was the downforce, how was the balance, everything and these days, the data logging and telemetry generated realtime by an F1 car will put a Ariane V launch to shame.

The engineers sitting in the pit tweak most things real time. Car not cornering properly ? Increase downforce by increasing the front and rear wing angle the car comes in for the 1st pit stop. Humdity higher than forecasted,do X.. etc. etc.

More importantly, the car is under continous improvement through the season. The car at the end of the season is a highly refined and evolved one, in many case very different from the car that came out at the start of the season. All this is a painful iterative development with every bit of aero, suspension,powertrain , engine tested out in windtunnels, dynamometers, test tracks, and then realising it in practice , getting it fielded , feedback taken, either improved upon or a new idea worked on.

If someone thinks that an F1 driver is a changu mangu cabbie dropped into a car's cockpit and let to go apesh* and he wins races by his Bangalore style bullying and idiotic driving skills, light years removed from reality.

In fact, if the IAF jocks ARE like the F1 drivers with the engineers and team, you simply CANT ask for anything more. That would be the ideal state.

Infact agile like dev. is the need of the hour for EVERY knowledge based field (including core R&D) in India. We cannot depend on "PhD+postdoc with 20 year gestation period to productivity" type byzantinian slavedriving to develop technology.

It will make for a very interesting business and technical case study in India.

My gut feeling is that this a big mistake by Myntra/Flipkart.

How do they intend to display the high def product images/videos over poor connections that most mobiles have in India.Most of the people still use low end Chinese Android phones which have low processing power. Finally, the cost of using mobile data instead of company LAN.

Myntra has announced to its customers that the website is shutting down from May 15 and will move to an app-only mode. In an email to its customers, Myntra wrote, “This May 15th, 2015, Myntra is taking the first step towards the future of fashion shopping – we move on from the desktop to being exclusively available on the App. We believe fashion is a very personal experience. Your sense of style, the brands you wear, the trends you choose to follow are unique to you. What inspires you to Look Good changes and evolves every day. The best fashion experience therefore, is a truly personalised and engaging one that is only possible through the device that is closest to you. A device that understands you – your mobile.”

Flipkart, which owns Myntra, has also indicated that it plans to move to an app-only mode. Senior Flipkart executive Michael Adani was quoted by the Economic Times as saying, “Last year, we had more on the app, but still did our Web and desktop. In the next year or so, we’re going to be only mobile.” Adani added that the sites mobile traffic had increased “10-fold” in the last 18 months and this tremendous growth had prompted this ‘mobile-only’ shift.

Flipkart has already shut down the mobile site. Searching for Flipkart on mobile browsers now redirects users to the respective app stores (Apple App Store or Google Play Store) in case they don’t have the app on their device.

India outsourcing giants such as Cognizant, CGI and Wipro are grabbing and increasing part of the global contract pie, according to IDC data.

IDC's data indicates that India outsourcing companies now represent more than 50 percent of the total contract value of the top 100 outsourcing deals in 2014. In 2013, India's outsourcers represented 43 percent of the total contract value.

According to IDC, the outsourcing contracts have also shifted from public sector deals to commercial and private sector. Meanwhile, fewer providers are vying for the big deals.

Overall, it appears that India's outsourcing players are doing a good job of moving upstream to more high-level engagements. Cognizant is an example of a company that has effectively moved upstream.

India's IT industry is unlikely to remain the amazing job engine that it has been. For the past two decades, the fastest way to increase your income has been to land a job with an IT company . The industry has provided a ticket to prosperity for mil lions of young Indians; children of security guards, drivers, peons and cooks catapulted themselves and their families firmly into the middle class in a single generation by landing a job in a BPO. Hundreds of engineering colleges mushroomed overnight churning out over a million graduates a year to feed the insatiable demand of India's IT factories.

This party is coming to an end. A combination of slowing demand, rising competition and technological change means that companies will hire far fewer people. And this is not a temporary blip -this is the new normal. Wipro's CEO has bravely admitted that automation can displace a third of all jobs within three years while Infosys CEO Sikka aims to increase revenue per employee by 50%. Even Nasscom, the chronically optimistic industry association, admits that companies will hire far fewer people. Not only will the lines of new graduates waiting for job offers grow rapidly longer every year, but so too will the lines of the newly unemployed as all companies focus more on utilization, employee productivity and performance. Employees doing tasks that can be automated, the armies of middle managers who supervise them and all those with mediocre performance reviews and without hot skills are living on borrowed time.

KJo would be pleased to know most revered co has relaxed the formals dress code and gone smart casual all days now.

Intel is buying Altera...in the hope embedded some fpga inside its cpu dies could have some application in terms of easier adding of specific newly desired customers functions at bootup time by loading the fpga image than a total cpu refresh which takes years.idea might be use the fpga to add things quickly until the next cpu refresh engulfs that into the asic.

IT party in India is not over , yet. We have moved to next gear ITVTY in next 5 years will not be about only outsourcing that revenue stream will saturate and stabilize in coming 5 years. These 5-10 years will belong to likes of Flipkart, Ola , PayTM, inmobi, musigma and several such startups . These guys are not afraid to pay fat paycheck and willing to take risks which the conservative lot was afraid of some of them will perish or get bought but there will be survivors and it is nice for India and it's IT community.

TI industry may have got the Chinease syndrom, where they start to think growth is natural law. The slowdown will actually be good. Better quality people will be available, pay will not skyrocket and services improve. New products will be invented.

Author and people commenting on the article are clueless about the real nature of outsourcing. There are a handful of H1Bs that actually come onsite for knowledge transfer (rarely more than 3-4). Bulk of the work happens in India and thats where Americans lose their jobs. There are just two choices outsource or layoff, either way it is a lose-lose situation for muricans.

i was a in a python programming class(basic level). some 25 people were there. every day the instructor would give us a longer problem in the last 45 mins based on the days teachings..like some of the simple board games or word games to write up. I could see only some 3-4 people seriously attempting and completing them before departing , the rest would all just shuffle away esp the women claiming their bus was leaving, etc etc. and I don't think they ever completed it at home either.

the instructor was saying people <2 yr exp usually took it seriously and completed such tasks. ppl >5 yr exp almost never were able to complete.

of the 3-4 who completed, in our batch, all were on the older side >=10 with me being the oldest probably. first day I had to work at night and early morning to finish. second day finished it in the class itself.

i really wonder what level of munna's are working in the industry . munnas come to me with simple questions they can easily google up answers for.....in my office the worst abusers of the liberal wfh policy are the FOB munnas, they also take atleast 1 sick leave a week ... we oldies think its only those who have home loan EMIs who bother to show up for work these days

^ Out of those 25 almost 15-20 might be those who might have joined the training because they might be light on work and wanting to add it on their resume Very few folks complete labs in such trainings . Most importantly when people get free trainings they never appreciate it truly , the same thing if was taken after paying say 500-1000$ would have forced at least 5 more guys to at least make an attempt to write code.

In my co we used to get paid for attending trainings so everyone used to attend 2-3 every year , last year after cost cutting they made trainings as part of self learning goals , this year training is kind of compulsory and is one of the parameters for yearly appraisal. Now people are busy exchanging Cloudera VMs and taking courses on MongoDB and what not.

To be honest even I went to Github to search for some interesting stuff and came across a Russian chap's implementation of a multi layered perceptron ( as a mujahid in college I only read it for a theory paper on AI ) . I am now planning to go back to core stuff like DSP a subject which I loved in the madrasa but wish to implement some of the theory actually in code and see how it works , all of it for some kicks.